The Power of the Mind!

Shaping & Conditioning Your Mind!

I've been listening to Anthony Robbins in my headphones lately and have heard a great activity that resonated with me that you too can do! Here's what he says ...'The quality of your life is the quality of the consistent emotions you experience.' How you feel is your life. What are the feelings you have on a consistent basis? Here's the simple yet effective activity...write down all of the emotions you experience in an average day and/or week. On one side write all the good ones and on the other side write down the negative ones - the ones that are painful and you don't like. Not the once in a while feelings, the ones you feel consistently. This tells you where you are really living right now. Awareness is the key here. How often are you feeling negative or positive? Where are you the majority of the time? Once you become consciously aware of what you are feeling, then you can go about making changes. If you want to make changes in your life, you must look to the cause, and usually the cause is the way you are thinking. Research has proven that in order to change the external conditions of our lives, we must first change the internal. The tricky part of our mind is that it is a creature of habit and we tend to think the same thoughts and feel the same emotions on a daily basis. It becomes a habit and we don't even know we are doing it. Very soon it becomes the norm for us.

Here are some tips on how to go about reshaping your mind! 1. Catch yourself going down a negative thinking path before you're knee deep in it! The moment you find yourself thinking negatively, STOP! Try and observe your thought and let it pass by, the same way it came in (mindfulness practice) 2. Switch it up really quickly with a loving thought Quickly shift your focus to a loving thought. I usually focus on my family, for example my beautiful nieces who I love to bits. When I visualise them I feel a whole lot of love and instantly feel better. I also have meaningful quotes and inspirational messages on my board at work and they are good 'go to' if I need a quick mind shift. 3. Be aware of times you are more prone to feeling negative and down. For me, this is often when I am cleaning around the house. Perhaps it's the combo of doing mindless work on such a repetitive basis and it's an activity my subconscious mind can do without thought - giving my mind an open invitation to think all kinds of things! Once you identify an activity that may breed negative thoughts, introduce something to change it up. I try to listen to music or a recording on my headphones as I vacuum! 4. Change the belief. This sounds easy and you know, it actually is. Here's a good example. I recently heard that someone was coming to stay in our home for a significant period of time and I had a real groan about it, as I really value my own space in my house. The selfish part of me came out and it didn't sound very nice! And then it hit me! I knew that no amount of complaining was going to prevent this person from coming and I made a decision to change the belief about having someone stay and instead change my thinking to positive thoughts. I started to think about all of the wonderful things I could do for them while they were here, and what fun I could create for us both. The awareness of the thought is the first step to consciously filling your mind with thoughts that are beneficial to you, thereby bringing about more positive emotions!